What happens when you change one port? Quite a lot, actually. Apple introduced the 30-pin iPod port on April 28, 2003. That makes the technology – a fairly streamlined solution for 2003 – nine years old and, thanks to the iPhone’s popularity, essentially ubiquitous. Now, however, as news leaks about either a 19- or 9-pin overhaul of the technology, there’s something important to consider: the install base of 30-pin devices is wild and deep and a simple change could create an e-waste problem if not properly handled.

To be clear: this new pin layout is coming and it’s coming soon. Whether it arrives in this generation or the next still remains to be seen, the sources I reached out to agreed that the switch was imminent.

Apple has sold over approximately 610 million devices with a 30-pin dock connector. There are no hard numbers on iPod dock sales available, but analysts estimate $2 to $3 billion in sales on iPod accessories per year. These are back of the envelope calculations, but assume a fourth of those are $100 docks – some are less, some are much more. That gives us about 5 million docks a year over nine years. That’s 45 million devices in essentially perfect working order that will be partially obsoleted by this move.

“Just imagine how many hotel rooms are fitted with alarm clocks that have a 30-pin dock connector,” said Arman Sadeghi, CEO of AllGreenRecycling, an e-waste handler. “Doing away with the 30-pin dock connector without developing any kind of backwards compatibility option would cause millions of pieces of accessories to become obsolete prematurely. Currently, there are tens of thousands of different devices such as chargers, alarm clocks, docking stations and other devices that work with the 30-pin connector. If this connector was replaced, it would cause a slow but very steady flow of those items coming out of use and into the ewaste stream.”

In short, Apple would relegate a great number of iPod docks to the scrap heap. Arguably, the vast majority of users, especially users using more expensive docks that connect to home entertainment systems and speakers, would invest in a small adapter that will convert a 30-pin jack to the smaller model, but a fraction of those will relegate those old docks to the junk pile. Once the 30-pin is phased out, however, there’s the secondary problem of obsolete iPods.

“The obvious problem will be with people throwing out old accessories but there is another issue as well,” said Sadeghi. “The value of Apple devices with the old connector will drop as well which will cause a large wave of those items entering the eWaste steam as well. iPods and other small devices that people have had for many years will start becoming less desirable in favor of newer versions that will have the same connector as their new iPhone. This effect may, in fact, prove to be a bigger generator of eWaste than the obsolete accessories.”

This sort of move isn’t new, but I suspect that this might be the first major mass exodus from one port architecture to another since serial connections gave way to USB and even that move took years to complete. Apple is notorious for railroading users into technologies although they usually pick the tech that eventually proves to be the winner (there’s a reason there weren’t Compact Flash card readers on earlier MacBooks before the addition of the SD card slot.) Where Apple is at fault is in the speed with which they’re going to push this through. They will sell millions of iPhones and millions of adapters, and the new port will also revitalize the stagnant accessories market. But it will also encourage long-time users to “upgrade” their docks to support the new standard (or at least spend $10 on a compatible adapter).

It’s also not Apple’s fault that accessory makers hitched their wagon to the Apple star. There was and is a lot of money to be made. But this change will change things considerably and the trash and recycling it will generate is has the potential to be more than impressive.

The real impact can be seen as negligible. Docks are made of plastic and a few magnets. In a perfect world those docks would end up at an ewaste location where they will be recycled into new products or they will end up in the garage sale and secondary market, used by millions who just don’t want to or can’t upgrade.

But in a world of increasingly scarce resources, it’s an interesting thought exercise to see what a minor change in on port on a popular phone can do to an entire ecosystem of accessories. Apple is lucky that an industry made hardware solely for their devices. Now we’re about to see what happens when that industry – and the consumers who bought into that constellation of accessories – suddenly has to shift direction.

pet peeve. I bitch about Sony for the same crap just as much. I'm a huge standards guy.

But yes, you are being realistic about why Apple is doing. Others have made bogus claims that it was a necessary advancement that was superior to any standard out there.

Perhaps is it. I just can't imagine giving a **** one way or the other.

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As for why the company is changing the dock connector that has been on nearly all iPhones and iPods since 2003, Schiller said it simply wasn’t possible to build products as thin as the new iPhones and iPods without changing the cord. Hence, the new “Lightning” connector.

Micro USB might not have achieved this goal. Looking at that Lighting (terrible name) plug the connections are on the outside instead of inside on the micro USB.

Still really annoying after the 30 pin has become essentially ubiquitous.

Micro USB might not have achieved this goal. Looking at that Lighting (terrible name) plug the connections are on the outside instead of inside on the micro USB.

Still really annoying after the 30 pin has become essentially ubiquitous.

The form factor is only a matter of choice. MicroUSB would do the job just fine if Apple was willing to go with the STANDARD form factor. their only excuse is that they REALLY feel that having a reversible plug is THAT important.

pet peeve. I bitch about Sony for the same crap just as much. I'm a huge standards guy.

But yes, you are being realistic about why Apple is doing. Others have made bogus claims that it was a necessary advancement that was superior to any standard out there.

It's the American way! Rugged individualism and lack of conformity to standards. Freaking socialists wanting to drag everyone down to the same level and make us all the same. Apple is keeping the American Dream and capitalism alive and well. Like they say, "It's as American as Apple pie."

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I am up for an upgrade on my iphone. I am itunes heavy and have all my music stored there. I am a hard collector and still buy CD's and vinyl and import them into my itunes, I don't buy/download digital albums or 1 song here or there, I buy whole hard copies and import them to itunes to put on my phone.

This connector thing has me a bit annoyed plus my wife has an android that has me somewhat impressed. My question(s) is, can an android phone work with itunes, or is there a more ideal player/storage system for android? Also any suggestions on a more optimal player/storage/phone relationship are appreciated.

I am up for an upgrade on my iphone. I am itunes heavy and have all my music stored there. I am a hard collector and still buy CD's and vinyl and import them into my itunes, I don't buy/download digital albums or 1 song here or there, I buy whole hard copies and import them to itunes to put on my phone.

This connector thing has me a bit annoyed plus my wife has an android that has me somewhat impressed. My question(s) is, can an android phone work with itunes, or is there a more ideal player/storage system for android? Also any suggestions on a more optimal player/storage/phone relationship are appreciated.

But a better solution would probably be dumping iTunes altogether if you're going with Android. There's lots of apps that will transfer your iTunes music library to something else. I'd really recommend Google Music. You can upload some 25,000 songs. Just download the Google Music manager for either Windows or OS X, and tell it to gobble up your iTunes library. It takes forever, but it will copy all music in your iTunes library to the Google Music cloud. Which can then be played from any device with an internet connection, iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, whatever. It works really really well. It's a pain uploading all your music, because it can take several days depending on how much music you have. But once it's in Google, it works great. I think it's a better solution than Apple's cloud music service.

So Apple made this connector a lot more simplified than I thought they would. And they sacrificed quite a bit just for the sake of size.

Quote:

Lightning, as the new connector is called, is described as "all-digital", which seems more obfuscatory than necessary. The basic conceit of this new connector is that at any point in time, not all the pins of the 30-pin connector were active. So, if a particular use case involved the charging pins and some audio pins, or the charging pins and USB pins, why not design a system that provides just enough pins for any given use case. The iPhone senses what pins are being requested and some on-device signaling sends the necessary bits over the available pins.

As an added design feature, the connector is reversible, so you'll never fumble with figuring out what way to put it in, as is so common with USB connectors.

There's much that we still need to dig into with this new connector, but we do know what it is almost surely not. This isn't a faster interface.

So instead of piping everything separately on its own pin like they could with the 30 pin connector, they now have to use processing power to monitor each pin for what type of activity is being sent. Which almost completely negates the advantage that the 30 pin connector had. And in doing so, they lost a bunch of functionality that was possible with the 30 pin connector. They're using additional system resources to monitor pins because of shared usage, which makes accessory manufacturers create adapters that are more complicated because they also have to monitor pins for the correct data.

You can find this on Apple's site regarding the new Lightning adapter: “Video and iPod Out not supported.” WTF? Dicks...

That's because it no longer has separate piping or sufficient pins to allow for it. That's pretty disappointing. This new adapter is not really faster at all. And naming it Lightning is just short of hilariously sad.